African Art Given to Met

By ELEANOR BLAU

Published: February 26, 1991

More than 150 bronze and carved-ivory sculptures from Benin, a former kingdom in what is now southern Nigeria, have been given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art from the collection of Klaus G. and Amelia Perls of New York. The museum says it is the most important gift of African art since the establishment of its Michael C. Rockefeller Wing in the late 1970's.

The objects, which include bronze figures, elephant tusks carved with royal figures, musical instruments, small decorative masks, furniture and jewelry, will be exhibited next January. Later, many of them will be placed on view in the Rockefeller Wing.

Philippe de Montebello, the director of the museum, said the gift would enable the museum to present, "at the highest level of quality, the full range of objects created in Benin and to trace uninterruptedly the changes in style and subject matter that occurred over its 500-year period." How Collection Grew

The gift makes the museum's collection of Benin art the second most comprehensive in the United States, after the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, and a leading collection worldwide, the museum said, adding that the two most extensive collections are in the Museum of Mankind in London and the Museum fur Volkerkunde in Berlin.

Klaus Perls, a dealer in 20th-century art, said: "I started buying African art simply because I liked to see it together with the works of the Picasso generation of artists in which I specialized as a dealer. Soon, however, my predilection for Benin art asserted itself, and it became the only kind of African art I continued to buy, until, quite unnoticed, it developed into a collection."

The kingdom of Benin arose in the 13th or 14th century. By the late 15th century, it had become a large, thriving state with a king regarded as divine, military power and a lucrative trade with Europeans newly arrived on the West African coast. It lasted until 1897, when British troops destroyed the capital. They confiscated thousands of royal artworks as war booty.

The Perls collection includes bronze heads of kings and queen mothers -- generic rather than individual portraits with wide-eyed stares and exaggerated swollen cheeks. Other highlights are bronze plaques that decorated the pillars of the palace in Benin in the 16th and 17th centuries. They show figures of chiefs and court attendants, their size reflecting their importance, their costumes rendered in precise detail.